Owner of Nortel Patents Sues Cisco For 'Immense' Patent Infringement 83
jfruh (300774) writes "The venerable Nortel Networks may have vanished into bankruptcy five years ago, but thanks to U.S. patent law, it can strike back at its old rival Cisco from beyond the grave. Spherix, a Virginia-based 'research company' that bought Nortel's patents in 2009, has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that Cisco has been knowingly violating 11 Nortel patents. 'The vast majority of Cisco's switching and routing revenue from March 2008 until the present is and has been generated by products and services implementing technology that infringes the Asserted Patents,' the lawsuit claims."
redefining Research (Score:5, Interesting)
a Virginia-based 'research company'
"ABOUT SPHERIX Spherix is committed to advancing innovation by active participation in all areas of the patent market" -http://spherix.com/
That sure doesn't sound like they're even pretending to be a research company they're patent trolls plain as day says it right on the first page of the site
Re:Canadian company goes bankrupt (Score:4, Interesting)
at least cisco is a company that does something, delivers products and or services...
the part of capitalism that we can all agree is necessary
Re:Canadian company goes bankrupt (Score:5, Interesting)
Right-ism that "attracts low-information voters with buzzwords and sounds bites like" socialism and "destroying America".
Still have my same insurance BTW.
I should file a patent on patent reform (Score:5, Interesting)
The big problem is that these patent trolls have nothing to lose. There's no way a company can reach a cross-licensing deal since the patent troll produces no products and is otherwise just a parasite with no redeeming qualities.
I think that if a patent is traded or sold that the recipient of the patent must either produce similar products that either use the same or a related technology to what the patent covers or if they don't produce anything they have a limited time, say 3 years, in which to produce a product otherwise the patent goes to the public domain.
Hey, I should patent this idea!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)